The Slave of the Charnal Grounds

Terry had never felt so exhausted in his entire life - - - well - - - no - - - that wasn’t true.  He felt this way nearly everyday.  He slumped down on the dirt and grass of the plains.  He found himself crying. Terry did not know why. Perhaps it was that he had suffered more humiliation than usual? Or perhaps his chains were tearing into his feet more than they normally would? No, it was his comrade who had died, whipped to death by the slave master. That was it. That was why he was crying.  Terry had half forgotten this in his daze. 

He looked to the sun up in the sky.  It was beating down hot rays, but it appeared oddly cold to the things happening below it.  

Terry glanced back down to protect his eyes.  His thoughts turned absent-minded. Absent-mindedness was better than turning back onto ugly thoughts or the uncountable memories of terrible experiences that Terry had suffered during his 19 years of life.

He thought about his name: Terry.  He had that it was an Easteroistan name apparently. An old master of his wanted a name respectable and authentic to the East from where her slave was descended from.  Terry hated the name.  He wished for a proper name.  He had never been to the East.  All he ever knew about it was that the cold, frozen East was inhabited by subhuman tribal peoples with blonde hair, white-skin, and blue eyes like him.  Savages who knew nothing of civilization and were cannibals who sharpened their teeth into long, needle fangs.  Terry closed his eyes, wincing at that image.  Would he have been among those barbarian beasts if things had happened differently?

He opened his eyes.  He wished that he had a real name like Shiv or Krishna, not an animal’s name. Yet he guessed it was appropriate because he was of the lesser races.  He scratched with delicateness the cavity where his nose had been.  He thought back long into his history. He attempted to remember the face of his mother and father, tried to remember someone who fulfilled any of those two roles.  Terry failed.  The recollection of his history was unfruitful.  It was a blur of terribleness. 

Then, he remembered, coming out of the memories of assault and back-breaking labour, the image of Lakshmi - - - Lakshmi, the Goddess of Good Luck and Fortune.  He could not remember where he had seen that wonderful representation of her or where had heard about the amazing Goddess, but he recalled that if anyone would be able to help him, it would be Lakshmi.  He had prayed to Lakshmi to grant him good fortune.  Terry recalled that he had prayed to Lakshmi throughout his life.  Terry’s face brightened a little and he smiled.  

Terry brought his palms together in a gesture for prayer. 

Then - - - he thought of all the times Lakshmi was not there for him.  Where was Lakshmi when he was enslaved? Where was she when his nose was cut off? Where was she when his eye had been gouged out? Where was she whenever a master came to him and touched and thrust him?  Terry felt every cut, bruise, and wound on his body. Where was Lakshmi when they had occurred?  The Gods cared not for the subhumans.  

“You damn bitch!” grimaced Terry, saying this out loud.  “Giving all the luck for other people, where’s mine - - - I curse you.” He paused after he had said this.

Then Terry jumped up and cried again aloud, “ I curse you, Lakshmi!”  

Terry noticed something.  The shackles on his legs had loosened.  He dropped to his feet and soon found that they were free.  His heart skipped a beat.  Adrenaline burst into him.  

Terry quickly gazed around. There was no one watching him.  He looked to the open grassland.  Terry’s thoughts turned rapidly.  This chance was one in a million, yet the chances that he would be spotted were also great, and his pursuit and recapture, almost inevitable.  

It was too risky.

Then Terry thought of his fellow slave who had been killed by the slave master, who he hadn’t even known. The thought made Terry stand up, release his legs from the chains, and split open in a sprint.  

His naked feet and red, near bleeding, ankles cut across the prodigious grasslands. His heart drummed.  Panic possessed Terry like nothing before.  He felt as if the entire compound were after him and if he took one look behind him, he would see the guards firing at him, the slave master chasing him, and the entire kingdom after him.  

Though there was no pursuit, the mad dash for freedom was terrifying as Terry flew into the plains to make his escape.  

Part Two

This has been a mistake, Terry thought.  

A slave knew where his next meal was coming from. An escaped slave knew nothing.  

He had been on the run for two and a half days.  He had been doing nothing but walking and running since then.  He had traveled through the grasslands, the hills, and a small jungle, stopping only by a small rain-pool for water.  He was frightened of run-away slave hunters and of wild beasts, and of other, other things.  For Terry, in his brief time of being alive, had heard of the things that stalked in the wilderness, not that the cities or countrysides were any better.  It was preposterous for anyone to think that humans, let alone subhumans, like Terry, were dominant in the world.  Although Terry hadn’t experienced anything, himself, everyone, even slaves, had a friend of a friend who knew someone who said that they were a magician or had an encounter in the realm of the supernatural.  Everyone believed and more - - - understood. There was no room for doubt. Terry had just made himself now a morsel for beast, brigand, or worse.  He had no way to defend himself.

Terry found himself, well, he wasn’t exactly sure where he was.  The lack of water and starvation had brought on a delirium which Terry could not shake.  He walked on in a stupor.  

He clutched his left, upper arm, where a frightened jump in the small jungle had maimed him.  The arm was torn up and only holding it tight could stop the blood from pouring out.  He had a vague notion, through the fear and all-consuming hunger and thirst, that he was padding on the edge of a road and that it was night.  He was dry, starved, and more tired than even when in the worst slave labour.  He had not slept, either, since he ran.  

Was that the light of a town that Terry perceived?  Was where he was walking tangled and wild? Terry could not tell.  Terry just kept on walking.

His foot slipped.  Terry tumbled off the side of the road. 

He was exhausted. His heart went only a little more swift when he noticed the rotting skull in front of his head. 

Terry had not the energy to get up.  The strength was sapped out of him, but in his torpor, Terry looked around where he had fallen.  He heard the little rush of water first.  He saw that the area was filled with dirt and ash.  Rocks and small, weird statues were placed around in a somewhat intentional manner here.  

Yet what was most striking were the bones. Charred bones, decomposing corpses, and gnawed pieces of rotting flesh were everywhere.  Terry had no nose, but the pestilence had hit his mouth and remaining eye.  

Terry understood where he was. He had found himself in a charnel ground.  

He could not stand up.  It was probable that he would be eaten by some carrion beast or discovered and killed by a madman if he stayed there.  Yet Terry did not think that. All he thought was that this was a suitable place to rest; it was empty, at least for now. No one would ever think to look for an escaped, subhuman slave here.  

He closed his eyes and slept.

Part Three

Terry awoke to find himself in a pandemonium of monsters.  

The graveyard had become filled with Pishachas, Ghouls, Rakshasas, Thayes, Bhutas, Pretas, Dakinis, or at least, what Terry thought these spirits were.  The creatures surrounding and crawling around him fit the descriptions he had heard from the rare, resting times around the compound’s fire. As well, there were many others which Terry had never heard of.  Some were humanoid and scaly, some were transparent, some had bestial features of large cats and jackals with multiple heads, some had gigantic jaws that appeared like gateway entrances into infernal temples, some were chimera clusters of beasts and inanimate objects, like a wolf combined with a table that padded over the prone Terry. Some were human and animal skeletons that stood up on their fleshless feet and danced on their own accord. Many of the terrors danced, some with wings, some without any limbs.  It was a complete cavalcade of monsters and mayhem that condensed under a moonless, starless, and terrible night-sky.

Terry had heard of such conglomerations within cremation and charnel grounds. When the grounds became empty, they soon became populated by another kind of being. Beings that care not for laws or rules or sense and who threw night parades and night parties. He had stumbled into one of their places where they made such gatherings. 

Terry was going to die.  He knew he was going to. He lay there, petrified. 

It was only two seconds that he lay there until the beings noticed that he was awake.  Terry froze there, teeth gritted, heart dying yet pumping a storm, waiting for the monsters to devour him. He wondered how it would feel.  

Quickly, an aggregation of grotesque, naked women with claws and fangs, wearing necklaces of human heads and ornaments of human flesh flew to Terry and surrounded him.  

Terry burbled as the monster women picked him up to his feet.  They began tossing him about to one another. He was like a standing ball of stumbling feet.  The forgone Terry attempted, here and there, a pitious cry as they pushed and shoved him in their play. 

Soon, they thrusted him out of their circle and towards the other monsters. The other beings joined in this macabre game of tossing the subhuman man.  Terry could not beg or cry anymore, he could not even stand, only the shoving monsters kept him on his feet.  Things became a blur for Terry.

Then abruptly, they became detailed again as he was tossed to a grinning ghoul woman.  He beheld her smiling face, showing a toothy grin.  She pushed him right in his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of Terry and sending him spinning.  

Terry tumbled and staggered.  He fell to his knees.  He had been propelled forward a long way.  After what seemed a long time, Terry raised his head up. He found himself bowing before a black-skinned, hideous, decrepit woman who luxuriated on a human-bone built throne.  

She was encompassed by the monsters. 

Terry realized that the cacophonous music noises had died down.  The monsters encircling him and the woman were staring at him.  

The tall woman on the throne was unsteady and looked unsatisfied. Her eyes were fearsome and her hands trembled.  Her clothes looked like a collection of rags found in this charnel ground patchworked together.  Her long nose wrinkled. She crooned, “Feed us.”

Terry stambered, “You can talk?”

The wrinkly, old woman grabbed Terry up by his dirty, worn clothes and screamed in his face, “Feed us! Boy! Feed us, now!”  The landscape of the woman’s face was both terrible and sublime.  

A monster whispered, “You did it before.”

Terry looked down and noticed that the harsh, painful wound that had bled in his arm was cauterized as if leeches had tenderized it.  His thoughts reeled as he realized that the creatures of the cremation ground had drank and eaten of it. Yet Terry, fearing for his life, slammed his fingers into the wound.  The fingers stabbed into the cauterized-tissue, letting it bleed again.  

“Look, here’s more,” he bleated.

The crone dropped him.  She pushed her head into his arm. Her mouth sucked out the blood.  

Terry staggered to stand. He burst into tears. He used the bits of strength he had left to tear away from the blood drinking hag.  

The monsters crowded around Terry, taking away the air around him.  The stench was indescribable and overwhelming, even to his mouth and single eyeball.

The crone on the throne muttered in a plain tone, “More.”

Terry gulped. “What you want me to do? Chop my arm off?” 

The hag smiled and her eyes glimmered.  

The monsters crooned.

“Look! Look!” begged Terry.  “Let me go to the forest and get all of you something. I-I-I don’t know what, but I will get it for you.” The notion of escaping the hag and monsters did not occur as a possibility for Terry at that moment.  The slave mentality and attitude had been beaten deep into Terry and now, for him in his delirium, the crone and the monsters were his new masters.  Now the only problem was getting food for them.  

He turned.

The cremation ground beings still hemmed him in.

“Must be blood,” rasped the old woman.

“No!”

“Must be fresh.” 

“AHHHH!”

“Feed us!”

“Does it have to be human?” Terry turned around to face the hag.

“Feed us!”

“Does it have to be mine.”

“Feed us, Terry!” murmured the crone.  “Feed us, all night long.”

Then all the monsters joined in with the old woman, saying, “You can do it! Feed us, Terry! Feed us, all night long!” in slow, erotic tones that induced a terrible sensualism in Terry.

The hag laughed, “Ha! Ha! That’s right, boy!”

Terry sputtered out, “How -  - - How do you know my name?”

The existential, subtle horror of these creatures and the crone knowing his name was chilling to the marrow of his bones.  

The dread became transcendental when the crone explained, “Oh, Terry, I’ve known you your entire life.”

Terry’s heart cracked, shattered in fear.

The crone smiled a rotten grin.  She placed a hand on her chest.  “I have so many names.  Nirrti, Jyestha, Alaksmi, Dhumavati.  I’m Lakshmi’s sister.”

“L-La-Lakshmi’s sister!”

“Yes. The Goddess of Inauspiciousness and Misfortune. You have forsaken my sister. You belong to me now.  Now feed us!”  the Goddess screamed.

“You - - - you all drink blood, my Goddess and her -  - - uh - - - uh - - - where am supposed to get it? Kill people?” 

The misfortune Goddess readjusted herself on her bone throne. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Huh?” 

The monsters and misshapen creatures encompassing Terry snickered.

Terry looked around at them in fear.

“You think this is all coincidence, baby?  Getting so tired and starved and delirious that you fall down here?  Your chains happening to break when you cursed Lakshmi?”

Terry protested, “That was a good thing, an auspicious thing.  How could you have manipulated that? Oh! Inauspicious Goddess?”

The Goddess laughed, “Really?! Terry? A slave compound losing one of its slaves is auspicious? You think that?”

Terry spun his head around, gazing at all the impossible heads and horrific, but awe inspiring faces.  He began laughing, “Look! I get it! I get it now! I’m dreaming. Your delusions of my delirium.  Hallucinations.” 

The Goddess dashed off her throne and rushed to Terry, trampling a few monster-creatures in the run.  She grabbed him off the dirt ground.  Her face grimaced in anger.  “Does this look like a hallucination to you! Punk! If I can do all the things I’ve done, who’s to say I can’t do anything I want?”

Terry, petrified by looking straight at this Goddess, blubbered unintentionally, “Like what?”

“Like deliver, Terry.” chuckled the Goddess.

She plopped him down onto his feet and jabbed him in his tender chest.  “Like I’ll see you get everything your secret, sacred, subhuman heart desires!”  The jabbings had made Terry trip backwards and fall a few feet away.  “Would you like a gold studded chariot?!”

The monsters crept closer around Terry. Now they touched him and felt him. Unlike other experiences that Terry had endured, these gropings did not feel unpleasant.  

“Or to become famous across the multi-coloured lands?” continued the Goddess.  “How about a meeting with the handsomest man in the world?”

Terry winced.

The Goddess smiled and winked at Terry. “Oh yeah. I know your proclivities.”  

“You’re going to get it!” murmured the monsters.

“If you want it, baby!” giggled the Goddess.  “How’d ya like to be a great Wheel-Turner, dining scrumptious for every meal?”

The monsters added, “She’s the girl that can make it all real!” pointing their limbs and members at the Goddess.

“You’re going to get it,” said the Goddess.  “I’m your Goddess, I’m your friend, and you got it all wrong.”  

Terry shuffled and fumbled in the foundlings of the monsters.  “What!? What!? What have I gotten wrong?”

“The positions of our relationship, pal. We ain’t your new masters. We’re your new willing slaves.  If you take a chance and just feed us, Terry. You know the sweet, red treats, the sticky, finger licking goodies we crave!!!”

“CRAVE!!!” squealed the monsters, crying in mouth-watering thirst.  

The Goddess roared, scowling in fiendish delight. She grabbed Terry and wrenched him back up.  “Come on! Terry! Don’t be a putz! Trust me and your life is going to rival Kubera, the God of wealth. Show a little initiative! Work up that gut!”  She patted Terry’s stomach.  “And you’ll get it!”

Terry shivered and smiled.  

The Goddess released him and he wandered like a child on the charnel grounds through the horde-crowd of monsters.

Terry then turned around back to the Goddess. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“A-ha! Ha! Ha! Heh! Heh!” chuckled the Goddess.

The charnel ground creatures snickered as they understood what was about to go down.  

The Goddess grinned.  “You didn’t have nothing until you met us. Come on, kid, what will it be?”

One of the charnel grounds creatures enquired, “Money?” 

Another abomination asked, “Boys?”

The Goddess whispered, “Think it over, there must be someone you can kill, really quiet-like.”

The monsters screamed, “And bring us some food!”

The Goddess suggested, “Think about a room in a grand palace, wrapped in silks and covered in warm oils.  A little make-up and prosthesis going to clean up your wounds and dead flesh, and you’ll get it!”

Terry grinned and walked around the dirt and ash of the charnel ground.  “Geez, I’d like - - - I’d - - - like - - - I don’t know what I’ll like - - -” He looked at the Goddess and all the monsters. He blushed. He had just been trying to survive all this time that he’d never conceived of what he wanted.  

“You’ll get the spirit,” said the Goddess.  She screamed, “So now go get it! If you want to be profound, if you really want to justify, take a breath and look around. A lot of people deserve to die!”

“A lot of people deserve to die!” caterwauled the creatures of the charnel grounds.  

Terry snapped into a nervous panic. He quickly babbled, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! That’s not a nice thing to say!”

The Goddess replied, “But it’s true, isn’t it?” 

Terry shook his head and looked around at all the monsters.  “No!”

The monsters burst out into uproarious laughter as if Terry’s “no” was the funnest goddamn thing they’d ever heard.

The Goddess smiled. “Sure, you do!” She stuck out her hand.

Terry’s vision began to get hazy.  It blurred. He perceived foggy clouds move across his sight.  Images were in them, pictures of events long past. They were filled with figures and people who Terry knew or had known, some were fellow slaves like himself, while the majority were slave drivers and slave masters, most of them his own. A few masters of other slaves were in there.  The visions were full of scenes of pain, sufferings that Terry did not want to relive. Terrible, they were.  

He beheld the time he witnessed one of his masters beating a slave-woman. She had previously been a noblewoman who had fallen from grace.  

He was shot back to the event when he was a child in a cage and witnessed an arm reach from the outside and fondle another slave boy’s genitalia.  

He reeled, but before he could regain composure, he was in another past time. He felt the terrible, uncaring heat of the sun again on his back as he marched in a chain gang.  He watched the slave in front of him, gaunt as a skeleton, fall over.  He heard the other slave’s plea for water as the drivers checked him over.  Terry found his own pleas ignored as they unhooked the skeletal slave from the chain gang to leave him to die.  

Terry wailed, but his senses warped again to another scene.  He was in the slave compound master’s quarters.  His wrists were tied. He screamed as the master’s hulking form entered in, penis fully erect.  His senses relived the fondlings, the rubbings, the penetrations.  

Then, he was thrown back to relive the daily humiliations in the slave compound until the visions stopped at the re-witnessing of the slave master, whipping his fellow slave to death on the day he escaped.  Terry wailed, every muscle in his body tensed, every part of himself scrunched up, never to release again.  

Eventually the visions dimmed until he was back in the charnel ground.  He stood once more among the bones, the decaying flesh, the beasts and the monsters - - - and the Goddess.  

His entire body relaxed. It felt like being born again.  Terry had heard of the concept here and there briefly when religion was spoken of. Yet this rebirth was not like what he had assumed.  This rebirth was dark, magical, and incredibly powerful.  He felt his body, his soul, his being brimming with surging power.  There was a thunder-bolt storm inside him.  

The entire world had transformed into a dream, a dark dream.  There was no banality, there was no bondage, they had been illusions of illusions.  

Terry’s thoughts turned back to the slave master.  He felt the vacantness of his eye and nose. He hadn’t felt the absences for a long time.  In those cavities, his despair grew into anger, hatred, rage, more intense than Terry had ever felt before in his life.  The fury grew inside his eye socket and nose cavity swiftly, until there were two orbs of beautiful blue anger in their absence.  

He turned to the Goddess and they both simultaneously yelled, “If you want a rationale, it isn’t hard to find!” 

The Goddess continued, “Stop and think, the slave master sure looks like Goddess food to me.” 

“He looks like Dakini food to me!” cried one of the nude, human head and human flesh wearing woman.

“Raksha food to my eyes,” muttered a horrific, tiger-faced creature.

“Thaye food to me!”

“Pishacha food to me!”

“Preya food to me!”

And so on, in a descending order of whispers.  

Terry screamed, “He’s awful, raping me like that!”

The Goddess cried, “Yeah! Beating you slaves to death and always acting so tough!”

“You all need blood and he’s got more than enough!” 

The Goddess, the Dakinis, the Rakashasas, the Thayes, the Bhutas, the Preyas, the Pishachas, and many more beings began jumping up and down, making the earth tremble.  They cried, “We need blood and he’s got more than enough!”

Terry stomped his feet with them.  

They chanted the blood chant.  “We need blood and he’s got more than enough!”

Then they stopped.

The Goddess walked over to Terry and exclaimed, “So go get it!” hitting Terry hard on the chest.

Part Four

“Slave master must die! Slave master must die! Slave master must die!!!” Was Terry saying this or was he just thinking it?  He did not know nor did it matter.

The entire universe was this eternal night where Terry crept through the slave compound.  The only things in the world were the slave compound, Terry, the slave master, and the eternal night.  

The time wandering back to the slave compound was not time at all.  It was not in a delirious daze-glaze like when he had run from it. He had walked back in a meditative state.  He was in a meditative state right now.

The whole world had become dissolved into a dream, a dream that could not be broken.  

Terry was in a trance state right now, a state that could not be broken.  

He shuffled his feet with silent swiftness in the dead of the night.  Terry maneuvered quiet-like on the steps that lead into a building of the master’s quarters.  

Terry was a shade, merely a silhouette moving in the night.  

He entered the building.  The hall was murky, yet Terry could see in the dark.  He glanced into every chamber.  There were no doors. In one of the rooms, there was a small knife, just lying there, as if placed there for Terry.

“Thank you, my Goddess.” Again, Terry did not know if he had said this or just thought it.

He picked up the knife. 

After picking up this knife, Terry heard movement in the building.  His stomach and heart lurched.  He felt a terrible energy fill his legs. The slave master was awake.  No. Terry wanted the slave master up.  He wanted him to be awake.  Terry wanted to fight him fair and square.  

Terry walked to the end of the hall until he jumped back.  He was caught in the full light of a lamp.  

The slave master was looking at him, his mouth was agape.

“Slave master must die! Slave master must die! Slave master must die!”  That was the one singular purpose, the reason for the creation of the world.  

Terry leapt and stabbed the slave driver, carving out the blade across the side of the slave driver’s chest. Hot blood dropped onto Terry’s wrist. 

The slave driver fell to the floor.  

This was different than what Terry had expected.  He believed that the slave master would have been a powerful assailant to kill.  Terry believed he would have the odds against him.   He believed that the slave master’s flesh would have been like steel.  

It hadn’t been like that at all.  The slave driver hadn’t put up a fight.  He had been helpless and his flesh had been like cutting through butter.  

Terry relaxed his arm.  There was no longer anything to fear in this night.  

The slave master wasn’t screaming. 

Terry wondered why, but it did not matter.

He looked at the dying slave master.  As disgusting as he was to look at, Terry noticed that the slave master was crying.  He mouthed, his voice soft, “Apsaras, celestial maidens, carry me to heaven.”  Then his face grew in terror. “No. You’re not Apsaras, AHHH! I am seeing - - AHHH! The fangs, those necklaces.  I am seeing Pishachas, Rakshasas!” The slave master shrieked a scream that was only a whisper.  

Terry spoke. “Those are the things coming to claim you, master.  They are my Goddess, my Spirits.  They are coming for you, master. They own you because of what you have done to me - - - and us!”  Terry opened his mouth in surprise as something that did not occur in his delirium and meditative state came to him now.  

He leaned over the dead slave master and moved silently over him, picking a key chain off the lifeless body.  Terry then moved across the building, hiding, completely secret, in the darkness.

#

Terry walked to the gang of chained slaves.  His fellow slaves stirred as he stepped close; they were both surprised and confused at seeing a figure of Terry’s hue approaching them.  

It was incredibly dark in the night, yet Terry smiled in the hopes they could see his smile.  “Hello everyone,”  he greeted.  

Some of the slaves stared at him, appearing perplexed.

One asked, “Do we know you?”

Terry was a bit shocked.  These were the people that he had spent his recent life with.  “Hey! It’s me! Terry.”

“Huh?” The looks upon all the slaves was still one of bewilderment.  This bewilderment remained for a while until one slave cried,  “Ah! You were the slave who escaped some time ago!”

“Yes.” replied Terry, mournful that people who he had lived with only knew him through hearing that he was the one who tried escaping.

“Why have you come back here?” questioned another, sitting, chained up in the dark.

Terry brought out the iron circle of keys.  “To get you out.”

The slaves gasped. Some cried. Many gave worried looks.

#

“Here, this is the way out of the compound,” explained Terry.  He stayed behind to watch and make sure that every slave he had freed was able to make it out.  Terry understood, especially in this between conscious and subconscious meditative state he was in, that what he was giving them was a bitter mercy. What he gave was merely a tough lot.  He was condemning his fellow slaves to a life of danger, incredible fear, and endless running from the masters of the masters of this compound. A life of always being on the run.  The only reason Terry did this was because the alternative was being worked to death in the sun, to die in chains, and body thrown away.  Terry also understood that a life of a runaway slave was his fate as well.  Even if he escaped this fate somehow, he was still white, a subhuman, and anyone he would meet would treat him as such.

However, as the last freed slave began to go, Terry grinned again.  

The last one stopped and turned around to Terry.  He was a small, young one - - - well - - - younger than Terry.  “Aren’t you going to come with us?”

Terry shook his head.  “No. There is something that I have to do.”

“What? What do you have to do?”

“I must feed them.” Terry responded. He headed back to the quarters of the dead slave master.  

Part Five

An old renunciant in red and white robes walked along.  He was muttering, cursing really, that he had decided to become a wandering mystic and travel halfway across the land while his vast fortune was on the other side, when he noticed that he was walking by a charnel ground.  He looked around it. There were plenty of bones and a gruesome stench filled the air with rancidity.  Fires had been lit around the empty place. The renouncer supposed that they were lit to burn dead bodies.  He had been traveling all day and the time right now took on an odd, almost magical, ending feeling.  It was then that the renouncer noticed that a young man was sitting, cross-legged,  a ways off, closer to the fires in the charnel ground.

The young man was white, had no nose, a missing eye, and his body was covered in scars and terrible inflictions.  He was garbed in rags.  

“He must be the one tending this charnel ground,” thought the renouncer.  “Skin being that white and looking that different, he might as well be an untouchable. I guess that taking care of a terrible place like this must be the only job he can get.”  The old noble impulses told him to look away from the white boy, he was an unclean subhuman, but the renouncer reminded himself he was past that now. He had taken on the path of the renouncer, as much as he now regretted it, and, human, subhuman, non-human, inhuman, animal, all were meaningless to the renouncer. A renouncer vowed to get beyond man-made distinctions, such as caste and race.

The renouncer walked over to the young pale-white man and stood by him.  

The young man noticed the renouncer, but did not look up at him.  

The renouncer looked to where he was staring.  

The white man was mesmerized by a large, tall corpse being devoured and gnawed upon by doles, jackals, vultures, hyenas, crows, and other carrion beasts.  

The renouncer was amazed by both the young white man and himself for being able to be near such creatures.  The renouncer stood awhile, knowing that this moment was a reminder of many things.  Then he spoke, “Long day, isn’t it?”

The young white man looked down from the corpse devouring sight.  He turned over his palms and stared at them.  “Yes.”

The renouncer remarked, “Must be tough in this world for you.”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever dream of what you want to be?”

The young white man looked up to the slowly darkening sky.  “No. I don’t know what I want to be.  I’ve never considered it.  It has never been an option.” 

The renouncer nodded.  “Aye. Many people in the world do not have a chance to choose who or what they are.  I am lucky in a way.  I wanted to be a Sadhu, a renouncer, an ascetic until - - -”  The renouncer was about to say that he regretted becoming an ascetic when the young white man interrupted him.  

The young man smiled. Beaming tenderly, he jumped up.  “I know!  I know what I want to be.  I want to be like you!”

“What?!”  The renouncer was flummoxed.

“An ascetic, a renouncer, a Sadhu.  One day, I’ll have red and white robes just like you.” 

The renouncer blinked.  It wasn’t everyday that a scarred-bodied, up and coming young man in the world suddenly sprang up and said that he was going to renounce it all and become a Sadhu.

“Why? Whatever do you want?” asked the renouncer.

The young boy’s smile and joyful features stopped.  He put his finger to his lips and looked perplexed, as if this was the first time he had heard this question.

Then he snapped his fingers.  “Treasure!”

“What?!”

“Treasure. Money. It makes the world go around.  Why not try and seek it!”

“An ascetic who wants money?” proclaimed the renouncer.

“Yes,” replied the boy.  

The renouncer stifled a laugh.  This white man was absurd. He had just now gotten up and decided that he wanted to be an ascetic who wanted treasure and money.

The young white man started walking off, away from the renouncer and the charnel ground.

“What?! Where are you going?” asked the renouncer.  

“To go off be a holy ascetic and to find treasure.”

“My boy! For Lakshmi’s sake!” 

“Don’t talk to me about Lakshmi.  I am with her sister now.”